iF DESIGN AWARD 2017

The 75 winners of the iF gold award took the stage in the BMW Welt in Munich

The 58 members of the jury at the Schuppen 52 in Hamburg

Fritz Frenkler, the jury chairman of the iF Design Award 2017

About 2,200 guests coming from 41 countries were gathered under the architecture of Coop Himmelb(l)au at the BMW Welt in Munich, Germany, to celebrate the winners of the iF Design Award 2017. The iF design award night was held on 10th of March and the ceremony was lead by Ralph Wiegmann, iF’s CEO, who gave the coveted trophy to the gold winners.

The iF International Forum Design was pleased to state the key facts of the design competition that register 5,575 entries from 2,675 participants from 59 countries. The entries were grouped under 7 different disciplines: Product Design, Communication Design, Packaging Design, Service Design, Architecture, Interior Architecture and Professional Concept. The jury awarded 1,137 different participants from 44 countries with the iF Design Award 2017.

The jury lead by Fritz Frenkler was formed by 58 expert members, independent, from 19 countries. To Fritz Frenkler “the competition is becoming increasingly international” and “to do justice to the diverse, local and cultural characteristics and needs of submissions, our jury has to include members from around the world.” The jury session that took place in the ‘Schuppen 52’, in Hamburg, from the 24 to the 26 of January, has been surely demanding for the jurors not merely because of the time needed to judge but mostly because of the quality of the entries that is increasing every year. Frenkler state also that the in a formal aesthetic terms, there is a vast number of entries in some disciplines that seem very similar. A good eye is required to go through such specific nuances, and to Frenkler it makes extremely important to distinguish, identify and to evaluate relevant details. He concluded by saying that “this can only be done by experts who aspire to be objective, and to thus judge the world’s most important design award.”

The iF exhibition space in Hamburg, at Elbarkaden on Hongkongstrasse 6, with over 1,500 square meters will be welcoming the winning entries. Due to a flood incident that took place in late December’s of 2016, the lower floor of the exhibiting space was damaged. Despite the incident the iF rapidly solved the problem and will follow with its exhibiting planned programme divided into three sub-exhibitions: